John Oliver name-checks Amazon and jokes about Bing in rant about corporate consolidation

John Oliver is an Emmy winner for good reason — his HBO show “Last Week Tonight” is funny and smart and pretty much just what we need every Sunday after a long week of living in 2017.

Last night, Oliver went after corporate consolidation and called out some of the biggest companies in America over the fact that they just keep getting bigger and bigger. After name-checking the four remaining major airline choices, three companies controlling the rental car business and the two giant companies that dominate the beer industry, Oliver also got in a shot at Microsoft.

“Online search engines are, as we all know, dominated by one major player. That’s right, say it with me … Bing!” Oliver joked. “That’s right, Bing. The best way to Google something.”

Oliver goes on to detail the serious nature of merger proliferation and how a failure to enforce antitrust laws can sometimes lead to bad news for workers and consumers. And remove the incentive for companies to continue to innovate and improve on products.

“When an industry gets too consolidated, any company trying to compete with them or survive in their supply chain can get crushed,” Oliver said. “Now we all know about Amazon, Walmart or Google, but there are less obvious results of this, too.” He goes on to make the point about Oakley sunglasses ultimately losing the fight to a giant company called Luxottica.

Writer and editor Kurt Schlosser covers the Geek Life beat for GeekWire. A longtime journalist, photographer and designer, he has worked previously for NBC News, msnbc.com and the Seattle P-I. Follow Kurt on Twitter or reach him at kurt@geekwire.com.

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